Ambasadora (Book 1 of Ambasadora) (6 page)

Topper, sporting his reptilian
av, stepped aside as Ariel took aim with a rocket launcher and fired a round
into the lead dragon. Silvery scales disintegrated. The animal flapped its
great wings once before falling to its death behind a distant white mountain.
The other timid dragons hesitated, but when Ariel fired a second rocket their
way, another beast took point and led their flight formation away, into the
darkening horizon of this virtual world.

“Zak, did you hear me?”
Topper sent a hot plasma blast into Zak’s shoulder from a crafter, a modified
cender. The nickname came about because the originator said it was craftier
than anything the obtuse contractors could come up with.

Zak’s vision blurred as the shot
triggered a neural stimulation of his pain center. His virtual arm dangled
uselessly at his side. Blood splattered his grey armored vest and soaked the
sleeve of his blue shirt.

“Can’t hear anything above
Ariel’s rockets.” Zak called up the healing program in his mind. Catching
Zak off-guard was one of Topper’s favorite games.

“So, what’s your take on the
ambasadora thing?” Topper’s voice took on a reptilian hiss to match his
present lizard form.

“Just one of Prollixer’s pet
projects. Most likely to draw attention away from current Embassy
mis-dealings.”

“But how’s this new element
going to affect our plans?” Topper asked.

“Won’t. Ambasadoras are just
another Embassy show, as impotent as Armadans.” Zak thought of his earlier
run in with David back on the
Bard
. Thinking of David as impotent made
him feel better.

The system might have a highly
trained military, but the Armada was all show. With no intra-system conflicts
brewing, they never used their skills, weren’t even allowed to carry arms
outside of their Armada ships. The Embassy wanted it that way. Yet the
Sovereign’s pet contractors were given free reign of the system after they put
down those first fragger protesters.

“The ambasadoras are just
another Embassy spectacle of shallow grandiosity.” The pain subsided as
Zak’s arm healed. He looked down to confirm the blood was fading, then checked
to see the sleeve had been properly repaired.

“The Media have been calling
them the
Faces of the Embassy
. Rumor has it they’re all women.”
Bullseye’s marmoset-like mouth morphed into a lascivious grin as his furry,
prehensile tail flicked back and forth.

“
Of course
they’re
all women.” Ariel’s brown braids swished against her almost bare backside
as she sidled up to the meter-high Bullseye. When she scratched under his furry
chin, he snaked his tail up her booted leg.

Just as he was about to reach the
skin at the top of her thigh, she clasped a hand around his throat and threw
him to the ground. “Women make better distractions than men.” She
gave him a kick to his mid-section.

Everyone laughed, except Zak. He
hated to waste time socializing with a bunch of dosed-up fraggers, especially in
the V-side. The anonymity it afforded allowed egos to run high with avatude and
behavior to go unchecked. Of course the entire fragger organization was set up
that way, and with good reason. Even if the Embassy found out the identities of
a few fragger operatives, the loss would be minimal. Only select bosses knew
all their members.

Zak looked around at the dozen
members of his contingency and wondered if, as a fragger node, he should
secretly learn a little more about the people he led. He trusted them because
they hated the Embassy. Aside from opposing the Embassy’s suppression of
technology, his fraggers also rebelled against the society’s millennia-old
caste system. All this reflected Sean’s own ideology. Putting their lives at
stake to make a difference made them honorable.

There were still flaws in the
system, though, like when someone’s ideology changed.

Zak looked from av to av. It was
more to show authority than to get a read on any of their faces. The
expressions weren’t real anyway, just the result of each fragger’s preferred
programming. Nothing in this world was real. Of course, most of society was
fake, too—the Uppers cosseted existence, Sovereign Prollixer with his claque of
Socialites, the Lowers wasting away in menial jobs, unseen and unheard.

“The bosses confirmed a
leak.” Zak kept his tone even.

“They sending us in to take
care of it?” Ariel loomed a head taller than any of them.

Take care of it
, as big a
euphemism as the word
fragger
, both just a nicer way to say
kill
.

“Yep. That’s why the invites
went out for today.”

Even the fraggers who weren’t
already plugged into a gaming world were summoned.

“Is it because of the
Palomin siphon?” Bullseye used his tail to swing up onto Ariel’s shoulder.
“That was a month ago.”

“I thought one of the other
contingencies took responsibility for that.” Ariel shoved the marmoset
back to the ground.

“They were there, but not
responsible for the extraction,” Zak said. “A group of rogue
contractors pulled the siphon from inside.”

“Rumor has it we lost three
fraggers during that siphon. That true, Zak?” Ariel trailed a finger down
his gun arm. He felt the sensation through his neural transmitter, and though
it registered in his pleasure center, he casually twisted his arm out of her
reach.

“That’s true. The rogues
caused complications, but the virus we gave Prollixer is back to doing its job.
Sources say once the quarantine was siphoned, his cell sweepers ceased
functioning. He’s now aging normally. Calls it his ‘curse.’” Zak dropped a
hand to his side and secretly unlocked the safety on his weapon.

“Can’t think of someone who
deserves to be cursed more,” Topper said. “Guess he can’t have the
rest of us knowing about his longevity bots. Might have a societal mutiny on
his hands.”

“He already does,” Zak
said.

“Those rogues did us a favor
then,” Bullseye said.

“Except….” Zak wrapped
both hands around his weapon, ready to level it. “Someone slipped in a
data miner to a fragger hub world.”

“If that’s true, then a
streamer either breached some pretty elaborate security or—”

“Streamers are average
citizens coming to V-side worlds to get laid or watch the sun set somewhere
they’ll never get to see in person. They barely have the knowledge it takes for
insertion,” Zak interrupted.

Someone accidentally stumbling
into the wrong part of the V-side was almost impossible. The random combination
of idents implanted during fragger initiation were not only scanned upon
entering the hidden V-side fragger worlds, but also monitored during any
session, preventing a mainstream user, dubbed streamers, from entering fragger
territory by accident or otherwise. Zak often wondered where all of his idents
were; in his arm, his thigh bone, his tongue? Only the doctor who performed the
operation knew.

“What we have is another
informer problem,” he said.
Someone who found a new ideology
.

“Do the bosses know
who?” Ariel gripped her rocket launcher in both hands.

“Yep.” Zak leveled his
weapon at Bullseye. “Confirmed just before I called you in.”

The marmoset’s large eyes bulged.
“Not me.” He morphed into a human av, green spikes of hair rocketing
upward from a youthful visage. He had called up his own crafter with the morph
and wielded it in trembling hands.

“Come on. You know me better
than that.”

Zak was the first to fire, a
point-blank shot to the forehead. In the real world Bullseye would have been
obliterated, but in this virtual existence, it just blew off the top of his
head without killing him.

He managed to choke out a plea.
“Zak, please. Don’t do this. I wouldn’t betray the fraggers.”

The little guy stalled, trying to
call up better weapons, activate his healing programs, or just unplug from his
V-side host. But Zak had lockout codes for every fragger in his contingency.
Bullseye no longer had control of his fate.

“Please.” Bullseye
screamed when he realized he’d never be able to unplug. “No. Help
me.” He crawled toward Zak’s feet.

Zak fired into Bullseye’s newly
healed face. The others fired their weapons until Bullseye could no longer call
up his healing programs. Then Ariel aimed her rocket launcher at his spasming
chest and finished the job.

Whoever Bullseye was in the real
world was now experiencing a neural overload. The result would be either a
cerebral hemorrhage or a heart attack. Then the idents would break down with
the cessation of cell activity. All traces of fragger involvement would be
erased, making it look like another gamer who dialed up his neural stimulator
too far or a streamer who couldn’t handle insertion. That was if anyone even
found the body. Most fraggers were anti-social and chose a life of solitude,
except in the V-side.

Probably did him a favor,
ending his lonely existence
.

Zak looked at his contingency and
knew one day that favor would probably be returned.

“I really hate your
sister.” Sara uppercut Dahlia’s jaw. Her head snapped back, her ponytail
slapping her face. Dahlia lacked Faya’s spirit. That must have come from Faya’s
father’s side since she and Dahlia shared the same mother. Dahlia had quite the
horrible shadow to live in, but that wouldn’t win her any sympathy from Sara.
As soon as she found out four weeks ago that Faya Renault’s little sister was
training here as well, Sara focused all of her energy for this one fight.
Masked as a simple scrimmage, she meant to exact revenge on Faya today, through
her sister.

A small group of Simon’s private
contractors cheered from the edges of the grass sparring ring. The bare-footed
females traded blows on the aqua-colored sod of the training garden, which was
fenced in on three sides by tall hedges.

A mid-morning grey sky hung close
above the clouds in the Prollixer Territory, a thousand miles from the Palomin
Reserve and Sara’s hateful modification cell. Her silver top and form-fitting
black shorts, which exposed her navel and the bottoms of her cheeks, remained
cool and comfortable in the temperate climate, even though she worked up a
sweat. Much better than the desert heat.

Sara leaned backward at the
waist, denying Dahlia any contact from a side kick. In one motion, she twisted
upright and pushed her open palm into the other woman’s chest. The force landed
the contractor on the ground. Only a month ago Sara was recovering from major
reconstructive surgery, and weeks before that from Faya’s torment. Sara kneeled
on Dahlia’s chest, a small part of her pretending it was Faya, and pressed her
knee into the woman’s throat. She grabbed a handful of pink hair and ripped it
from her head. Out of desperation, Dahlia punched at Sara. Only one of the
three jabs found a mark, on the side of her jaw, but Sara didn’t flinch.

The crowd whipped into a frenzy
as Dahlia struggled beneath Sara. The contractor’s fist unballed and her arm
fell to the grass. Her magenta streaked hair splayed in the grass around her.

Strong hands lifted Sara up and
dragged her aside. She struggled against them until she saw it was Rainer
holding her back. “Make sure she’s still breathing.” A couple of the
contractors surrounding the ring jumped to help Dahlia. Some meandered away now
that the show was over, but a few just stood and watched Rainer. Being Simon’s
Head Contractor, Rainer probably battled those killer looks constantly, and
most likely the actual attempts that sometimes accompanied them.

Dahlia sputtered to life. Rainer
used his reporter to call for a medical team and ushered Sara to the cool-down
area outside of the hedge ring.

“Hello, Rainer.” Sara
smiled at him, a little knowing smile that spoke of the secret they shared. She
overheard one of the remaining male contractors tell his companion,
“Should have figured she’d be with
him
.” Because Sara was an
ambasadora, training in contractor techniques, she was a novelty here, which
afforded her a fair share of nightly proposals, none of which she ever
accepted.

Seeing Rainer again after so many
weeks reminded her why. She stole a glance at him while they walked together
and was surprised to find his gaze on her, as well. “Nice to see you have
your strength back. I’m not sure Dahlia deserved that, though.”

Those were his first words to
her? Nothing had changed. Disappointment flooded through her, then a slow
simmering rage. Sara had more than her old strength back—she was stronger than
ever, both physically and emotionally. Months of torture were bound to kill her
or force her to adapt. She was thankful it was the latter.

“Dahlia was an unfortunate
victim of her lineage,” Sara said.

“She’s no more her sister
than you are yours.”

Sara stiffened at the mention of
her family. Until a week ago, she had had no contact with them since Palomin.
Then, just before the announcement that Sara would become one of the honored
ambasadoras, Simon allowed her to speak with her mother. He stood beside her
during the video call, seeming like the proud leader, when really he wanted to
monitor what she said. The threats he had made against her family should she reveal
her true circumstances kept her tone light and a smile on her face for those
few moments. Her mother expressed her pride, but Sara could see confusion and
worry behind her expression, especially as she took in Sara’s enhanced
appearance. Thankfully, Simon hadn’t noticed.

Rainer lifted a towel from the
table and handed it to her. The shade was the same light green found in Simon’s
apartment back at Palomin. Rather than pulling away from the memories of
torture it evoked, Sara accepted it graciously. The swirl of her purple
intra-tat glowed a bit brighter on her right hand.